State of Minnesota v. Aaron Benjamin Jacobs ( 2015 )

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2014).
STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A14-1245
State of Minnesota,
Appellant,
vs.
Aaron Benjamin Jacobs,
Respondent.
Filed March 9, 2015
Reversed and remanded
Kirk, Judge
Ramsey County District Court
File No. 62-CR-14-1382
Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and
John Choi, Ramsey County Attorney, Thomas R. Ragatz, Assistant County Attorney, St.
Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)
Erik L. Newmark, Jill A. Brisbois, Newmark Law Office, LLC, Minneapolis, Minnesota
(for respondent)
Considered and decided by Ross, Presiding Judge; Kirk, Judge; and Reilly, Judge.
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
KIRK, Judge
In this pretrial prosecution appeal, appellant State of Minnesota argues that the
district court erred by granting respondent Aaron Benjamin Jacobs’s motion to suppress
evidence obtained as a result of the search of his house. We reverse and remand to the
district court for further proceedings.
FACTS
On February 27, 2014, the state charged Jacobs with two counts of fifth-degree
controlled substance crime. The complaint alleged that police officers who were
investigating a traffic accident observed drug paraphernalia and smelled unburned
marijuana inside Jacobs’s house. The complaint further alleged that officers searched
Jacobs’s house after obtaining a search warrant and located approximately 3.25 pounds of
marijuana, several forms of identification in Jacobs’s name, over $14,000 in cash, and
various drug paraphernalia.
Jacobs moved to suppress the evidence obtained as a result of the entry into his
house and the subsequent search pursuant to a warrant and for dismissal of both counts of
the complaint. Jacobs claimed that the police entered his house without a warrant and
that no exception to the warrant requirement applied. The district court held a contested
omnibus hearing to address the motion.
St. Paul Police Officer Jamie Lalim testified that on February 25, 2014, he
responded to a call for assistance from Officer Matt Jones, whose squad car was involved
in a collision with another car. When Officer Lalim arrived at the scene of the collision,
another officer was already there talking to Officer Jones, who was stuck inside his squad
car. Officer Lalim testified that the collision “was bad” and Officer Jones’s squad car
appeared to be totaled. Officer Jones appeared confused, but he was able to tell the
officers that a white male had fled the scene.
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Officer Lalim checked the other car that was involved in the collision, but there
was no one inside. He called for backup and ran the car’s license plate. Dispatch
informed Officer Lalim that the car was registered to Jacobs, who lived three-and-a-half
blocks from the location of the collision. Officer Lalim went to Jacobs’s address, which
is a single-family home. He first went to the front door of the house, but he concluded
that no one had used that door recently because snow was covering the sidewalk leading
to the front door. Officer Lalim then went to the house’s south door, which was
accessible from the driveway. Officer Lalim observed what appeared to be fresh blood
on the handle of the door and called for backup officers.
After the additional officers arrived, they knocked on the door multiple times, but
nobody answered the door. Officer Lalim could see through the kitchen window from his
position at the door and he observed a white male, who was later identified as Jacobs,
walk into the kitchen. Jacobs was naked, swaying back and forth, and appeared to be
confused. One of the officers called their sergeant and asked if they could enter the
house to conduct a welfare check because he believed the person inside the house was
involved in a serious accident and possibly had internal injuries. The sergeant gave the
officers permission to enter.
One of the officers kicked in the door, overcoming an initial attempt by Jacobs to
hold the door closed. When the officers entered the house, they found themselves
standing in a small hallway. Jacobs struggled with the officers before an officer was able
to place him in handcuffs. Because the hallway was too small to accommodate Jacobs
and the officers, they entered the kitchen during the struggle. Officer Lalim observed
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injuries on Jacobs’s hand and the left side of his head. The officers asked Jacobs if he
had been involved in an accident, and he denied that he had. The officers then called for
medics to further assess Jacobs’s medical condition.
Officer Lalim testified that he smelled a strong odor of marijuana as soon as he
entered the house. When he was in the kitchen after placing Jacobs in handcuffs, Officer
Lalim observed two large baggies in Jacobs’s oven through the oven window. He shined
his flashlight through the oven window to further examine the contents. Officer Lalim
testified that the officers discovered wet jeans, shoes, and a shirt or sweatshirt in the
hallway and they found keys that they believed belonged to the car that was involved in
the collision. Officer Lalim notified the narcotics unit that he thought there was
marijuana in the oven and the officers obtained a search warrant for Jacobs’s house later
that day.
The district court granted Jacobs’s motion to suppress. The district court
concluded that the state met its burden of showing that the police officers’ warrantless
entry into Jacobs’s house was justified by the emergency-aid exception to the warrant
requirement because they “had both objectively and subjectively reasonable grounds to
believe that there was an emergency at hand and an immediate need for the protection of
life or property.” But the district court sua sponte concluded that the search of Jacobs’s
oven was outside the scope of the emergency-aid exception because Officer Lalim shined
his flashlight into the oven to see the marijuana inside the oven. This pretrial appeal by
the state follows.
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DECISION
The state may appeal pretrial orders in felony cases under Minn. R. Crim. P.
28.04, subd. 1. “To prevail, the state must ‘clearly and unequivocally’ show both that the
trial court’s order will have a ‘critical impact’ on the state’s ability to prosecute the
defendant successfully and that the order constituted error.” State v. Zanter, 535 N.W.2d
624, 630 (Minn. 1995). Critical impact is shown when “the lack of the suppressed
evidence significantly reduces the likelihood of a successful prosecution.” State v. Kim,
398 N.W.2d 544, 551 (Minn. 1987). The state need not “show that conviction is
impossible after the pretrial order—only that the prosecution’s likelihood of success is
seriously jeopardized.” State v. Underdahl, 767 N.W.2d 677, 683 (Minn. 2009).
Here, the charges against Jacobs are based solely on the marijuana and drug
paraphernalia that the police discovered in Jacobs’s house. The suppression of that
evidence results in the dismissal of the charges against Jacobs. Therefore, the state has
demonstrated that the district court’s order granting Jacobs’s motion to suppress evidence
has a critical impact on its ability to prosecute Jacobs successfully. See State v. McGrath,
706 N.W.2d 532, 539 (Minn. App. 2005) (“Because no other evidentiary basis for the
charges in the complaints exists, we conclude that suppression of the evidence seized
from the . . . residence has a critical impact on the state’s ability to prosecute these
cases.”), review denied (Minn. Feb. 22, 2006).
The state next must prove that the district court’s pretrial order was error. State v.
Baxter, 686 N.W.2d 846, 851 (Minn. App. 2004). “When reviewing pretrial orders, this
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court may independently review the facts and determine, as a matter of law, whether the
district court erred.” Id.
The state argues that the district court erred by concluding that the officer’s use of
a flashlight to look into the oven “transformed[ed] a plain-view situation into a search
that requires a warrant or some exception to the warrant requirement.” In response,
Jacobs argues that this court should affirm the district court’s order suppressing the
evidence obtained during the search of his house. Jacobs does not specifically respond to
the state’s argument about the use of the flashlight during the search, other than to argue
that Officer Lalim’s search of the oven exceeded the scope of the officers’ entry into his
house under the emergency-aid exception to the warrant requirement. Instead, Jacobs
argues that the officers’ initial entry into his house was illegal. We first address Jacobs’s
argument because the determination of whether the officers’ warrantless entry into the
house was reasonable affects the reasonableness of the search of the oven.
Both the United States and Minnesota Constitutions guarantee an individual’s
right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. U.S. Const. amend. IV; Minn.
Const. art. I, § 10. “[W]arrantless searches and seizures are per se unreasonable unless
they fall under an established exception.” State v. Hummel, 483 N.W.2d 68, 72 (Minn.
1992). If a warrantless search does not fall within an exception, the fruits of the search
must be suppressed. Id.
Under the emergency-aid exception to the warrant requirement, police officers, “in
pursuing a community-caretaking function, may enter a house without a warrant to render
emergency assistance to an injured occupant or to protect an occupant from imminent
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injury.” State v. Lemieux, 726 N.W.2d 783, 787-88 (Minn. 2007) (quotation omitted). It
is the state’s burden to demonstrate that the police officers’ conduct was justified under
the exception. Id. at 788. Courts apply an objective standard “to determine the
reasonableness of the officer’s belief that there was an emergency.” Id. The supreme
court noted in Lemieux that many courts apply the following three-prong test: (1) the
police officers “must have reasonable grounds to believe that there is an emergency at
hand and an immediate need for their assistance for the protection of life or property”;
(2) the officers’ primary motivation in conducting the search must not be the intent to
arrest and seize evidence; and (3) the officers must have “some reasonable basis,
approximating probable cause, to associate the emergency with the area or place to be
searched.” Id. The supreme court further noted that “assuming that the officers’
subjective motivations are a relevant state-law consideration, a warrantless search
conducted during a criminal investigation does not necessarily preclude application of the
emergency-aid exception so long as one of the motives for the warrantless search
corresponds to an objectively reasonable emergency.” Id. at 790.
Here, the record establishes that one of the officers’ motives for the warrantless
search corresponded to an objectively reasonable emergency. Officer Lalim went to
Jacobs’s house directly from the scene of what he described as a “bad” two-car collision
that totaled at least one of the cars involved. Officer Lalim had observed that the officer
who was involved in that collision was confused and possibly hurt. When Officer Lalim
arrived at the address of Jacobs, the registered owner of the second car involved in the
collision, he observed blood on the house’s door handle. No one responded to the
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officers’ multiple knocks at the door and Officer Lalim observed a man through a
window who was naked, swaying back and forth, and appeared to be confused. Under
these circumstances, it was reasonable for the officers to believe that Jacobs had been
involved in the collision, was injured, and needed emergency assistance.
Jacobs argues that the officers’ entry into the house was “primarily motivated by
intent to arrest and seize evidence,” not to check on his welfare. He contends that this
motivation is demonstrated by the officers’ failure to ask him if he needed assistance or
to call for medical assistance while they were outside the house or to check his medical
condition once they were inside the house.
But Lemieux does not require a determination of the officers’ primary motivation.
Instead, the Lemieux court noted that one of the motives for the entry must correspond to
an objectively reasonable emergency. 726 N.W.2d at 790. Here, the record establishes
that the officers entered the house to check on Jacobs’s welfare after he failed to answer
their knocks on the door and they observed behavior from him through the window
indicating that he was possibly hurt. The officers did not necessarily need to request
medical assistance for Jacobs until they were able to assess his medical condition in
person. The fact that Officer Lalim saw Jacobs walking around inside the house indicates
that although his medical condition was possibly serious, he was at least mobile. The
reason that the officers placed Jacobs in handcuffs upon entering the house was because
he tried to prevent them from entering and then further struggled with them when they
attempted to place him in handcuffs. Once the officers subdued Jacobs, they assessed his
medical condition and called for an ambulance. Therefore, we conclude that the district
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court did not err by determining that the officers were justified in entering the house
under the emergency-aid exception to the warrant requirement.
Finally, we do not consider whether the district court erred by determining that the
officers’ search of Jacobs’s oven exceeded the scope of the officers’ warrantless entry
into the house under the emergency-aid exception because we conclude that the district
court erred by sua sponte considering that issue. The only issue that Jacobs raised in his
motion to suppress was whether the police officers’ entry into his house was illegal.1 The
state therefore did not have notice that the district court would sua sponte consider
whether the police exceeded the scope of the entry under the emergency-aid exception by
using a flashlight to look inside Jacobs’s oven. Because the state did not have notice, it
did not have the opportunity at the suppression hearing to develop the record regarding
the police officers’ actions inside Jacobs’s house or to present oral or written arguments
on the issue. We therefore reverse the district court’s pretrial order granting appellant’s
motion to suppress and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.2
Reversed and remanded.
1
The record does not reflect the state’s understanding that Jacobs was also arguing that
the search exceeded the scope of the officers’ entry under the emergency-aid exception to
the warrant requirement. However, if a discussion occurred off the record, the district
court would only need to make an appropriate record on remand that there was such an
understanding.
2
We do not prejudge what the district court will find on remand after a more thorough
contested omnibus hearing. In fact, the district court may still reach the conclusion that
Officer Lalim’s search of the oven exceeded the scope of the emergency entry into the
house, taking into consideration this court’s opinion in In re Welfare of J.W.L., 732
N.W.2d 332 (Minn. App. 2007).
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